Vladimir Minorsky was a prominent 20th
scholar of Iranian culture. A review of one of the articles that appeared
in this memorial volume - produced to memorialize him - is provided here
to acknowledge his contributions to Iranian studies. The article that
appeared in Minorsky’s memorial book reviewed here was authored by
Professor Mary Boyce,[ii]
a well known scholar of ancient Iranian studies.

About the dedicatee:Vladimir Fedorovich Minorsky[iii]
was born on 5th February, 1877, in Korcheva, a small town on the Volga,
now lying submerged at the bottom of the Mosvow Sea. He was educated in
Moscow. As a gold medallist of the Fourth Grammar-School he entered the
University of Moscow where he read Law from 1896 to 1900. On his
graduation he studied Oriental Languages at the Lazarev institute for
three years.

In 1903 he entered the
Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, serving from 1904 to 1908 in Persia
and from 1908 to 1912 in St. Petersburg and Turkestan; and in 1911,
jointly with a British representative, he carried out a mission in
North-Western Persia. In 1912 he was appointed to the Russian Embassy in
Constantinople, and in the following year acted as Imperial Russian
Commissioner on the international commission for the delimitation of the
Turko-Persian frontier. He was next appointed to the Russian Legation in
Tehran, from where, in 1919, he went to France, remaining for some years
at the Russian Embassy in Paris. In 1923 he began to lecture on Persian
literature at the Ecole National des Langues Orientales Vivantes, and
later taught Turkish and Islamic history in the same institution. From
August, 1930, to January, 1931, he acted as Oriental Secretary to the
Exhibition of Persian Art at Burlington House, London. His association
with London University began in 1932 when he was appointed lecturer in
Persian at the School of Oriental Studies; in 1933 he became Reader in
Persian Literature and History, University of London, and, in 1937,
Professor of Persian in succession to Sir E. D. Ross. In 1944 he retired,
receiving the title of Professor Emeritus and being appointed Honorary
Fellow of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). In 1948-9 he
acted as visiting professor at the Fu'ad University (Cairo).

Other academic titles
Professor Minorsky has received include that of Corresponding Fellow of
the British Academy (1943), Honorary Member of the Societe Asiatique of
Paris (1946), and Doctor honoris causa of the University of
Brussels (1948). At the invitation of the Persian Government he took part
in the celebration of the Firdausi millenary in Tehran and Tus. He
attended the Inter-allied Congress of Orientalists in London (1923), the
International Congress of Linguistics in Geneva (1931), the International
Congress of Orientalists in Leiden (1931), in Rome (1935), in Brussels
(1938), in Paris (1948), and in Istanbul (1951). Minorski passed away in
1966.

Sometimes old buildings
possess the virtue to express far better than words the fears and
uncertainties of nations or religious groups. The old Zoroastrian houses
of Yazd are one such example. Civil and religious persecution have
dictated the style and pattern of their unusual architecture. Memories of
repression are encoded in the design of their thick adobe walls. They are
voices frozen into stone.

Yazd is situated on a high,
arid plateau at the interface of two mighty deserts (the Dasht-e Lut and
the Dasht-e Kavir). It was once an important station on the Silk Road,
famous for its fabrics and textiles.[iv]
For many years, its splendid isolation protected it from political
upheavals in the rest of Iran. After the Mongol invasions that saw the
total disappearance of Zoroastrian populations from the provinces of
Sistan and Khorasan, Yazd emerged unharmed, protected by its vast expanses
of featureless desert. It became a haven for Zoroastrians from all over
Iran. In this city of walled gardens and turquoise domes they continued to
practice their religion and customs relatively undisturbed. Most of them
still spoke Dari, once the official spoken language of the Sassanian
court, later confined solely to the Zoroastrian populations of Yazd and
Kerman (though fragmented into countless local dialects).[v]
The pleasant oasis city drew many artists, poets and Sufis to the safety
of its walls.[vi]

The region’s prosperity and
isolation lasted until the beginning of the eighteenth century whereupon
two hundred years of political and religious turmoil ensued which
decimated the population. Yazd suffered attacks from Afghans, Zands and
Afshars, to name but a few. The Zoroastrian population was subjected to
additional hardships. As a religious minority subject to discriminatory
laws, it found it had as much to fear from its Muslim neighbours as from
the foreign forces armed against it. It took extra measures to protect
itself, a fact reflected in the community’s unusual domestic architecture.[vii]

Yazd is famous for its
unique sky-line of badgirs: tall, elegant wind-towers intended to
catch the slightest movement of air and direct it downward into cool
underground chambers. The houses of the region have great vaulted
talars that open out onto spacious courtyards containing pleasant
water features and gardens. But the older houses of the Zoroastrian
population are significantly different from those of their Muslim
neighbours.

In 1963 when Mary Boyce
arrived in the region to study them, she discovered gloomy, fortress-like
buildings virtually devoid of any furniture or greenery. They were low and
airless. No badgirs adorned their roofs. The primary consideration
of the builders had been defence. The ideal solution would have been to
build upwards, erecting high, tower-like houses as are found (for example)
all over Scotland. But in Iran, Zoroastrians were not allowed to build
their homes any higher than a man could reach (or any taller than the
houses of Moslems). They could only build downwards, creating dark
honey-combs of subterranean rooms with adobe walls several feet thick to
withstand attack. The Zoroastrians were physically greater in stature than
their Moslem neighbours (“mighty men”, as Mrs Boyce calls them) and they
could have put up a fight if they had to. But it seldom happened. The
penalty for killing a Moslem was certain death: to kill a Zoroastrian
meant incurring only a modest fine, usually waived by the authorities.
Better, therefore, to prevent attacks in the first place

Entry to the houses was via
a single door from a narrow lane just wide enough to allow a fully-laden
donkey to pass. The Law stated that the door of a Zoroastrian dwelling
could be secured by only a single hinge, so a series of doors had to be
built (one after the other) to prevent forced entry. Finally, at the end
of a gloomy corridor, a narrow door - the smallest of them all - led into
a bare, central courtyard or rikda.

There were no widows.
Sometimes glass bottles could be seen protruding from the walls of the
entrance lane. But these served as spy-holes rather than windows, defence
being uppermost in the minds of these persecuted inhabitants. The only
light to enter the house was through the tiny courtyard or via irregular
gaps in the doors or ceilings. In some of the buildings the courtyard had
been covered over completely to prevent intruders gaining access from the
roof. The result was total darkness and oppressive claustrophobia. It is
ironic that Zoroastrians, with their sophisticated theologies of light,
should have been forced to live in such shadowy, enclosed buildings.

Bicameral
fortresses
The oldest standard form of Zoroastrian house described by Mrs Boyce dated
from the early nineteenth century. All other houses were variations on its
basic design. It was known in Dari as a do-pesgami (or
“two-chambered” house) on account of its two open pavilions facing each
other acrossthe rikda. These were known invariably as the
pesgam-i mas and the pesgam-i vrok (the ‘great’ and the
‘small’ pesgams).[viii]
Both had domed roofs to help minimise solar gain and speed up the loss of
heat from below.

The pesgam-i mas (or
“great pesgam”) was so called not because of its size, (which was often
smaller than the pesgam-i-vrok) but on account of its greater
significance. It was the room set aside for religious observances and
where the ritual vessels, the afrinigan, the bowls and spoons etc., were
kept. It was never built facing north (the direction of evil); and was
always hidden from the doorway so that no non-Zoroastrian visitor might
set eyes upon it. Clay rectangular pots in which grasses were sown at
major festivals were secured high up in its corners, a welcome relief from
the monochrome grey of the house.

The great pesgam was
considered pure (“pak”) and hence no-one in a state of ritual impurity
could enter it. Its floor was of plain earth. Brick, being a man-made
material, was considered unsuitable as it offended the Zoroastrians’
feeling of harmony with Nature. The age of a house could often be
estimated by the height of the great pesgam’s floor. This was
always higher than the floors of the rest of the house, a consequence of
the fresh layer of soil that was spread upon it every year during the
Farvardagan festival (the festival that welcomes back the spirits of the
dead).[ix]

Opposite the pesgam-i
mas was the pesgam-i vrok (or “small pesgam”), a secular
pavilion dominated by weaving looms with threads strung from wall to wall
across the room. Zoroastrians were forbidden by law to practice any
skilled trades, and hence were forced to rely upon weaving (as well as
some farming and cattle-droving) to earn a living.

There were various other
rooms around the periphery of the house, all of which Mrs Boyce describes
meticulously in her article. What is striking about them is their
emptiness: the almost complete lack of furniture, decoration or even
cupboard space. In the bedroom, clothes and linens were stored in cotton
bundles along the sides of the walls as if its inhabitants were ready at a
moment’s notice to flee for their lives. This was often the truth, for
persecution was endemic. In their haste they often buried valuables under
the floors, hoping to retrieve them at a later date. This knowledge gave
rise to the belief that all old Zoroastrian houses contained “buried
treasure”, and ensured that they attracted the attention of potential
burglars. Somewhere in the house, however, there was usually a panahgah
(a concealed room) where valuables, wine - and even children - could be
secreted in times of trouble.

Another room commonly found
in these buildings was the ganza-yi punidun. It was nothing more
than a simple stone hut. Women would pass the first few days of their
menstrual periods here, segregated away from the men. But by the 1960s
this architectural feature of Zoroastrian homes was already passing into
memory. Mrs Boyce once asked a young Zoroastrian girl what purpose she
though the structure might have served, and received the reply that it was
probably “a hen-house”!

The only heated room in the
whole house was the long narrow kitchen (or pokri) with its
aromatic bread ovens. The weather in Yazd could be bitterly cold in
winter, so the family would often congregate here in the evenings. Its
fire was never allowed to go out.

Many of the laws
discriminating against Zoroastrians (and other religious minorities) in
Iran were still in force at the end of the nineteenth century. A
Zoroastrian had to dismount from his donkey when approaching a Moslem. He
was not allowed out of his house on rainy days because the water from his
clothes might “contaminate” believers. He was compelled to wear
distinctive garments to identify him as an outsider. He was not allowed to
wear a hat or shoes, unless they were torn. Even eye-glasses were
forbidden him. Subject to the notorious jaziya tax,[x]
he was kept firmly in poverty: a second-class citizen in his own country.

But when restrictions upon
them relaxed at the beginning of the twentieth century, Zoroastrians again
began to improve and upgrade their homes. The do-pesgami developed
into chor-pesgami (or four-pavilioned) houses, upper stories were
built, courtyards opened up and badgirs added. Water ponds and gardens
began to appear to grace the inner courtyards. Life began to return to
normal once again. Mrs Boyce reminds us at the end of her article that:

"Persia, with its love
of gardens and flowers, was Zoroastrian before it was Muslim; and it was
poverty and oppression that forced the Yazdi Zoroastrians into their small
bare, fortress-like homes, without a blade of greenness to relieve the
monotony. [But] as soon as pressure on them slackened, they created houses
with gardens again.” - Mary Boyce, 1964

[iii]
Biography of Vladimir Fedorovich Minorsky has been reproduced courtesy
of Bulleting of School Oriental and African Studies (BSOAS), Volume
14, 1953.

[iv]
Marco Polo, who visited the city in 1272 called it “a noble and
considerably sized city”. It was famous for Yazdi, a silken fabric
embroidered with golden threads.

[v].
Dari differs from Farsi in possessing fewer borrowings from Arabic.
Over the centuries, Dari speakers have experienced extensive political
pressure to yield up the language. Today there are less than 10,000 of
them worldwide, most of them in Kerman and Yazd. Dari belongs to the
N. Western Iranian language family and is related to Kurdish and
Balochi. It is not equated with the Dari spoken in Afghanistan.

[vi]
A few of these Sufis built influential monasteries in the district.
Some of them, like the monastery of Sheikh Ahmad Fahadan, can still be
seen today in Yazd.

[vii]
The Zoroastrians of Yazd distinguish between two kinds of Moslem: the
najib (kind, generous) and the na-najib (the opposite of najib). They
attach these names to several villages in the district and travel
considerable distances to avoid contact with na-najib communities.

[viii]
Mrs Boyce sought out the correct Dari words for many of the domestic
objects she wrote about in her article. She was helped by two primary
source books:

[ix]
These basic house designs are peculiar to Yazd and are not found among
the Zoroastrian houses of neighbouring Kerman. If they once existed
there, they probably disappeared in the 18th century after
the massacre of the Zoroastrian population by Mahmood the Afghan.